


Heartsick

by xxSparksxx



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, M/M, Post-Battle of Five Armies, Spoilers, or as friendship, you can read this as shippy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-17
Updated: 2014-12-17
Packaged: 2018-03-01 22:24:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2789867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xxSparksxx/pseuds/xxSparksxx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The days grow longer, and the sun warmer, but there is a coldness in Bilbo's heart that no sun can warm. His heart is not here. It has not returned with him to the Shire. His heart is entombed in stone, far beneath a mountain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heartsick

**Author's Note:**

> Post-Battle of the Five Armies. There are SPOILERS for specific events in the film. This can be read as Bilbo/Thorin or simply as Bilbo & Thorin friendship.

Bilbo doesn’t plant the acorn. Not when he first gets back, and is so busy trying to claw back his belongings from all and sundry. Not later, when his smial is put to rights again. Not after six months have passed and still his heart _aches_ with the pain of it, the grief.

He had never known such grief could exist, before he met Thorin Oakenshield. Now he knows that he will never be free of it. His every moment is consumed in sorrow. When he is awake, Thorin’s smile haunts him. When he is asleep, he dreams of holding Thorin’s cooling body in his arms, begging him to hold on.

‘ _The eagles are here,_ ’ he says, every night in his dreams. But Thorin never waits. Every night Thorin slips away, into the company of his ancestors, leaving Bilbo alone on the ice. Bilbo tries not to sleep much; the daylight hours are kinder to him. At least when he is awake, he can keep himself busy. It takes long weeks to reclaim all of his furniture, his books and clothes and heirlooms. Messrs Grubb, Grubb and Burrowes grudgingly return money to those who have purchased things, and Bilbo has little trouble with some people. Others refuse to accept that he is who he is, that he is alive and returned and would actually quite like his mother’s glory box back, thank you.

Then there is the garden, which has been left untended for a year, and he throws himself into the work, until his hands are calloused and his skin is brown. When it rains, and he is confined to his home, he scrubs the floors and dusts every surface, until the smial is as clean and tidy as ever it had been.

Clean and tidy and _empty_. So empty. His pantry echoes with Dwarvish laughter; he hears heavy boots along the hallway and a mournful song in the sitting room.

He does not plant the acorn. He puts it on the mantelpiece, in a small box so it cannot accidentally fall off and get lost. Thorin had told him to plant it, and to watch it grow, but Bilbo cannot do that. Not yet. Perhaps not ever. Oak trees take many years to grow, it’s true, but Bilbo will never again think of oak trees or acorns without thinking of Thorin, and he can’t – he can’t – 

Instead he plants harebells and pansies, and prunes overgrown roses. With an arm that remembers swinging a sword, he wields an axe against thick ivy trunks that had grown in his absence. He throws himself into hard work, and plenty of it, and he tries not to think about how alone he is. He tries not to think about Thorin.

He does not cry. He hasn’t cried since the immediate aftermath – not since Dwalin had arrived at his side and discovered Thorin’s death. Dwalin had roared his anguish, and Bilbo had dried his eyes and ceded his place, letting Dwalin be at Thorin’s side. He had gone to search out Kili, to see if at least one of them had survived, but Kili had fallen too, and Bilbo had not been able to face Tauriel’s grief.

He has not cried since then. Not at Thorin’s funeral. Not when Fili and Kili were laid into stone tombs, side by side forever more. He has not cried, and he does not cry now, not even when he wakes in the night, hands reaching out for somebody who will never be there again. He does not cry, and nothing makes him laugh – and though sometimes he smiles, it feels a little like betrayal, to smile when the greatest friend he ever had is – 

There is the ring, of course. It is a comfort and a curse, giving him escape from unwanted visitors or conversations, and yet constantly reminding him of what he has lost. He packs away his other relics from his adventure, the sword and mithril shirt, the Dwarven shield and the chest full of Troll gold. He puts the map in a frame, but then puts that, and his contract, away in a desk drawer that he never allows himself to open. 

One day he will be able to see these things again, perhaps, but not now. Now they are merely painful reminders of the things he has lost, and the things he has gained in the process.

He tries to become Bilbo Baggins again. He will never again be respectable, for his disappearance and return are more than a seven-days-wonder here in the Shire, but he eats seven meals a day, and dresses smartly, and always carries a pocket handkerchief. He never speaks of where he has been, or what he has done – not even to those who have the courtesy not to ask him. His Took cousins are eager for his story, but he cannot speak of it, and offers no gossip to go with the cakes he serves at afternoon tea, when visitors come calling.

He dreams of fire and ice and blood. He dreams of Thorin – Thorin at the gates, Thorin looking at him with such furious betrayal – and he becomes more and more weary. He looks at himself in the mirror each morning and sees himself becoming more and more haggard. But there is no rest in sleep, and he must work when he is awake, or be overwhelmed with memories.

The summer passes, and autumn creeps in. Bilbo remembers autumn in Mirkwood. He remembers climbing a tree and finding sunlight and a blessed wind when he reached the top, and colourful autumn leaves spread all around on the trees’ canopy. The colours in the Shire are different, somehow, but no less vibrant. He finds beauty in it, and takes to going for long walks, stick in hand and ring in his pocket. Work has not soothed him, he reasons, and so he will try solitude and exercise.

He walks many miles, from one edge of the Shire to another – and beyond, sometimes. His tough feet are tougher still, and his legs are used to walking, after a year of it. He has grown rounder again, with good Shire food and plenty of it, but not so round that he cannot achieve a good stride when he sets off on a ramble. He watches the Shire change colour, and finds that the quiet seems to do him good. At least he has fewer dreams, and sleeps better, and Bilbo will take any comfort he can get, these days.

His walks are curtailed when winter sets in, for he has no great desire to be outside in the cold. He potters about his smial, cleaning and cooking and reading his books. More than once he speaks, commenting on something he is cooking or reading, only to realise that he is, of course, alone. There are no Dwarves in his smial, no mischievous Fili to poke fun at him, no Ori or Balin to ask questions about Hobbit customs. He is alone.

He will always be alone, Bilbo sees now. The rest of his long days stretch out ahead of him. No more adventures, no more Dwarves. His friends are half a world away, and some of them are cold and dead. 

Thorin is dead, and all Bilbo has left is a mithril shirt, a map, and an acorn. He cannot look at any of them, and he cannot plant the acorn.

Gandalf comes to visit him that winter, and has barely been inside the smial an hour when it begins to snow.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to stay the night,” says Bilbo, peering out of the window at the grey sky and the white flakes falling thick and fast. He would suspect Gandalf of some wizardry, if he did not know that Gandalf has no control over the weather. But it is pleasant having Gandalf to stay, for the week or so until the heavy snowfall melts away and the roads become useable again. Gandalf watches him, but says very little about Erebor or the Quest, and nothing at all about Thorin. They talk of the Shire, and Rivendell, and Gandalf spins a story well enough for many an evening to pass by quickly and merrily. 

“I must be getting on,” says Gandalf, when he prepares to depart. “I can’t spend all my time idling around the Shire with Hobbits, you know.” Bilbo nods, though he still isn’t entirely sure what Gandalf spends his time doing. It has been good to have company, and he knows Bag End will feel lonelier than ever now, but he won’t ask Gandalf to stay longer. That would mean admitting how heartsick he is, and though he’s sure Gandalf knows, still he cannot admit it out loud.

“I did say that you would not be the same,” Gandalf reminds him, turning back at the gate to look at Bilbo one last time.

“You did,” Bilbo agreed. “And I wouldn’t give that up for anything, Gandalf.” Gandalf’s eyes are sharp, but he takes his leave, and Bilbo goes to sit beside the fireplace and thinks about other fires, less comforting and comfortable than his little hearth fire.

The winter passes more slowly than the summer that year, at least for Bilbo. Bag End is as clean and tidy as he can make it. His pantry is stuffed full of good food – jams and pickles, preserved fruits, cheeses, salted meat and fish. More than one Hobbit can get through, even on a proper seven meals a day. It’s enough to feed a host of Dwarves.

Or perhaps just thirteen. Thirteen of the best, bravest people he has ever known.

But only ten remain, and none of them are near enough to call in for tea, although they will always, _always_ be welcome. Sometimes Bilbo thinks he will never see any of them again, and that thought makes his pain sharper, and he whiles away more than a few evenings getting more than a little drunk, until he pulls himself together and locks his wine cellar, hiding the key behind the acorn’s box on the mantelpiece so he won’t be tempted to retrieve it.

As soon as the ground is warm enough, Bilbo returns to his gardening. Weeding and planting and cutting the lawn back down to a proper size occupy him for long days, and he makes work for himself rather than risking idleness again. The days grow longer, and the sun warmer, but there is a coldness in his heart that no sun can warm. 

His heart is not here. It has not returned with him to the Shire. His heart is entombed in stone, far beneath a mountain, with – with – 

Spring blossoms, and one day Bilbo realises that he has been back in the Shire, back home, for a year. He sits on the bench in his front garden, smoking a pipe, and thinking back not to his return, and not to the Quest, but to the beginning of it all – to Gandalf’s arrival that sunny spring day, when he had flustered and bothered Bilbo so much and then somehow embroiled him in his machinations.

He was a different Hobbit now, and for all his grief, he did not wish himself back again. If he had to choose between a life without knowing Thorin Oakenshield, and a life where he has lost Thorin, he knows which he would choose. He does not know how to go on, with such a grievous hurt, but the friendship of Thorin is not something he could ever wish gone.

And yet still he does not cry, and still he cannot look at his sword, mail or map. The acorn remains in its box on the mantelpiece, and the box is well dusted, but only because Bilbo is so assiduous in his cleaning. He has not opened the box in many months; he isn’t sure he will ever be able to plant the acorn, though it feels like a further, final betrayal of Thorin. But he can’t bury the acorn in the ground, he can’t bury Tho-

The second spring is worse than the first. Bilbo cultivates his prize tomatoes and lettuces, and thinks of Bifur. He tries to scribble some rhymes and stories for his younger cousins, and thinks of Ori. His doilies make him remember Bofur, and his mother’s glory box still bears the marks of Kili’s misuse. He cannot turn but he finds some memory, in the things he sees and hears and even in scents. It is intolerable. His dreams become bad again, so once more he begins to avoid sleep, unless it is the exhausted, numb sleep that comes after a long day of hard work. He works, or he walks, and if sometimes he sleeps out in the woods, at least nobody sees him doing it.

June arrives with a visitor, heralded by a mighty knock at the door, a knock that sends Bilbo into a memory for a moment, before he shakes it off and goes to answer it. And yet the visitor on his doorstep might as well have stepped from a memory; it is a Dwarf.

He has never seen this Dwarf, and yet he knows at once who it is. She is shorter than her sons had been, but her golden hair is a match for Fili’s, and her nose too, though her blue eyes are Thorin’s. She is clothed as a male, with trousers and armour, and her beard is as fine as any other Dwarf beard, but she is a female – her armour does not quite conceal her curves, and he knows who she is.

“Lady Dis,” he says in greeting, and steps aside to allow her in. He takes her cloak and hood, then guides her to the sitting room and asks her to wait a moment while he makes tea. But she follows him to the kitchen and takes a seat at the kitchen table, watching as he potters about the kitchen collecting cups and saucers, buttering slices of bread and cutting slices of cake. He brings out his favourite jam, and the fine biscuits that one of his cousins had sent over to him the day before. 

He wants her to be welcome here, to show a welcome in Hobbit fashion, and that means the best china, and the best food – as much of it as she likes. She may not understand the meaning of it, but he will offer it nonetheless, for she is Fili and Kili’s mother, and Thorin’s sister, and they were as dear to him as any family. 

“How did you know me?” she asks him, when he joins her at the table. She is watchful and cautious, but Bilbo doesn’t grudge her that. 

“I knew your family very well, by the end,” he says. “I always wondered where Fili’s looks came from – Kili, of course, was like Tho-,” But he cannot finish the name, so he falls silent.

“I am going to see my sons’ graves,” says Dis after a while. “And my brother’s.” Bilbo can say nothing to that. He remembers the graves – the stone tombs. He remembers Orcrist and the Arkenstone being placed in Thorin’s hands, to be buried with him forever more. He remembers helping to wash the blood from Kili’s skin, and dressing him in fine clothes of Durin blue. He remembers all these things and more, and he cannot speak.

“I will not stay there,” she tells him. “I have lost too much to that Mountain.”

Bilbo nods his understanding. His hand shakes as he lifts his tea cup, and there is an uncomfortable feeling in his throat and behind his eyes. The Lonely Mountain. He sometimes wonders whether the Mountain had been cursed many years ago, whether Thorin was merely the last in a long line of sacrifices made to it. The gold had been made dragon-gold, rotten and evil, and the Mountain itself had been bathed in blood, by the end.

Sometimes it is easier to blame supernatural forces, some capricious power, rather than accept the simple truth: that Thorin had been unlucky, and stubborn, and so desperately, dreadfully full of pain. 

“My brother wrote to me,” Dis says, “before the end. Before the battle. Balin sent it to me afterwards.” From a pocket she pulls a piece of parchment, worn with handling. She slides it across the table towards him, and then helps herself to a biscuit. “He would want you to read it, I think,” she says.

Bilbo unfolds the letter and reads it once, twice, and then he cannot see through the tears which have sprung into his eyes. He covers his mouth with a hand and pushes the letter away, fearful that he might ruin it with a teardrop, and he closes his eyes and _cries_. He cries as he has not cried since those awful, awful minutes when Thorin had slipped away from him with a gentle word and a soft look. He cries as if his heart is breaking all over again.

‘ _I have fallen to it, my sister, and now I go to see if I can redeem myself,_ ’ Thorin had written. ‘ _Forgive me, if you can._ ’

There are words that Bilbo will hold dear to him for the rest of his days, in this hastily-scrawled letter. Thorin wrote of things that Bilbo wishes he could have heard from Thorin’s lips. But they had run out of time, and death had not waited long to claim Thorin’s life. He knows Thorin had pulled himself from the dragon sickness, that he had become himself again, and he knows how truly Thorin had valued his friendship. Nonetheless, seeing the words written in Thorin’s hand unlocks something, and Bilbo is crying and cannot stop himself, no matter how it must look to Dis.

But Dis gives him no word of censure, and is kind enough not to try to comfort him. She drinks her tea and eats plenty of biscuits and bread and butter, until Bilbo has mastered himself. He finds a handkerchief, wipes his eyes and blows his nose. He drinks his tea, the whole cup of it at once, and crumbles a biscuit into small pieces.

“He was my friend,” he says, and there are a hundred different meanings in the simple words. Thorin was so many things to him, and now without prompting he begins to speak about it – about the things that had happened, and the choices they had made. He tells Dis about her sons’ final weeks and months, he tells her about Thorin’s dragon sickness, he speaks until he is hoarse, and Dis takes his teacup to the sink, rinses it out, and fills it with water for him.

“Did he truly die… _himself_?” Dis asks him then. “Was he my brother, Master Baggins?”

“Oh yes,” says Bilbo at once. “Oh yes. And even in the middle of it, he was still – he was still _Thorin_.” He tells her about the acorn then, shyly, knowing how little Dwarves generally care for growing things. But whether it is because of her brother’s letter, or whether it is because of everything he has said to her already, Dis seems to understand what he is trying to convey.

“Have you planted it?” she asks, and he shakes his head. The acorn sits in its little box on the mantelpiece, untouched for long months. He had carried it back with him, and he had meant to bury it, he truly had, but he hasn’t been able to do it. Thorin’s last wish for him. His last request. Bilbo has not been able to obey him. He cannot bury the acorn in the ground, as Thorin has been buried in cold stone.

But his tears have changed things. His heart is less heavy than it has been for so long. So he takes Dis into the sitting room and he opens the box, and she accompanies him out into the back garden, sprawling across the hillside. The sun is warm and bright, a perfect summer’s day, and Bilbo thinks back to two summers before, when he and the Dwarves had been on the road eastwards. It had been a wet June, that year.

Bilbo takes a hand trowel and digs a hole in the dark, soft soil. With Dis beside him, he buries the little acorn in a corner of his garden, a tranquil spot that will bring him peace when he comes to tend to the ground, to the sapling that will spring from the earth. In years to come, when the sapling becomes a tree and gains height and girth, Bilbo thinks he will put a bench here, and the strong oak will remind him of the better times.

“I will come back and see it, if I may,” says Dis, when they are back inside and she is retrieving her cloak and hood. “On my return journey.”

“My door is always open to you,” says Bilbo, clasping her hand in his and trying to convey his thanks. Dis smiles then, and it is Thorin’s smile, and Bilbo remembers the last smile Thorin had given him and finds that he can think of it without thinking of the pain that followed. Thorin had smiled before he had left Bilbo, and Bilbo can find comfort in that now.

She leaves, but Bilbo does not feel alone in Bag End. The echoes of Dwarf laughter and Dwarf boots no longer pain him. He takes the map from his desk drawer, and puts it up on his study wall where he can see it every day. It is dirtied and damaged, but now it represents more than pain and loss. Now he can see the hope in it, and he can remember how Thorin had looked when he had first stepped foot back into his long-lost home.

He does not dream of Thorin’s death that night, nor any night again.

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: none of this is mine. Beta'd by the wonderful etmuse.


End file.
